Choices made in the next few years will affect the risks of climate change. If conservatives are right, and adapting to climate change is a better strategy than mitigating it, this has to start with adapting our economies - the source of unsustainable environmental change.

Science tells us that no particular adverse weather event either can or should be put down to climate change. That is just not the way climate change works. However, science also tells us that climate change will certainly bring an increase in both the frequency and severity of adverse weather events in general.

The mood, ambition and announcements at the World Economic Forum in Davos has left me feeling more energized and confident than ever that 2014 will be the year when the world can and must come together to meet the growing challenge of climate change and seize the opportunities manifest in a transition to a low carbon economy.

The issues my parents faced living in a foreign land never truly dawned on me until I began living abroad alone, and that "dawning" was only a superficial realisation. Growing up, I found my parents uncouth and I was annoyed by the seemingly unending confusion and embarrassment they bestowed upon me: why did they have to speak Vietnamese so loudly in public?

When Bond created Paddington in 1958 he was an innocent mirror on Britain of the time. The Paddington of 2012 would be an altogether different affair. Would he make it past Heathrow customs without a issuing a hard stare or two? How would he cope with three-fruit marmalade?